


Intimately Rearranged

by Yatzuaka



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Lots of angst up in here, Memory Loss, Sexual Content, The swears
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-07-26 14:53:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7578394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yatzuaka/pseuds/Yatzuaka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Memories are tricky, ephemeral things. How does someone cope with their loss? </p><p>(In which Loki loses his memories and neither Loki nor Darcy handle it all that well.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Not Quite Right

**Author's Note:**

> Before we start, I have to express my gratitude for Whyndancer. You'd be reading an entirely different story if it weren't for her invaluable aid and comments.
> 
> You're a precious wonder, [Whyndancer](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Whyndancer/pseuds/Whyndancer). Thank you.  
> (Go read her stuff. Do it. It's excellent.)
> 
> I have tried to weed out the mistakes, but I'm sure there are still some lurking in there. Apologies.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part one, Darcy's POV.

** 2026 - Day 3878 / Day 1 **

It's an ordinary day scrolling through news feeds, watching videos and issuing press releases, fielding demands for comments about a huge variety of incidents. I had just delegated some Freedom of Information Act requests to my interns so I could try to plan a vacation, or rather the best vacation ever. Which was going to be difficult. Loki and I have been together for just over ten years, so I know a little something about how picky he can be. 

I rule out a cruise for obvious reasons, a lovely resort in Mexico and everything in Paris, despite my desire to go back. He's sort of banned from France. I am about to break down and call in a favor from Pepper, when my desk phone rings.

"Darcy Lewis speaking." Not a lot of people have my work number, but I've been told enough times that answering the phone  _Yo, sup_  is unprofessional that I don't just to skip the lecture.

I recognize the voice of Kirk, one of the communications guys in the Command and Control Center, even if he sounds weird.

"Loki's hurt," he says, like that's something new.

Loki has gotten more than a few bruises and scrapes out on these missions, but he's virtually indestructible, and they almost always heal in a day or two.

Kirk doesn’t sound like himself at all when he tells me that this is  _different_. He details how and I hear what he says, even if the ability to understand what it means is temporarily lost to me. After hanging up the phone, his words sink in slowly and I think that this is the worst news I've ever gotten.

I can't feel my fingers and there's a high-pitched whine in my ears. Loki's not going to die. He's not. There's no way. 

We have a life here. It's a good one. I'm not ready for this yet.

Natasha comes out of nowhere, covered in dust and smears of blood, probably other people's, and touches my shoulder. Her mouth moves as she shapes words I can't quite hear. She's not supposed to be out in the field anymore, and her appearance takes me aback.

I let her pull me along behind her, trusting her, because she knows that the inevitable consequence of trying to keep me away right now will result in unpleasantness. The quin-jet has just landed on the rooftop helipad when we make it up there.

I see someone being unloaded on a stretcher. It can't be him.

He always wears his helmet - that stupid, gold, horned helmet.

Where is it? 

I choke when he's wheeled past, blinking to scrub his image out of my eyes. Natasha is a steady rock at my elbow, keeping me upright when my knees fail me.  _He's not dead, right?_  I don't know if I whispered it or screamed it, but Natasha makes it clear he's still very much alive as the shiny metal doors swish closed and the elevator carries him down to the medical center.

Natasha tugs me back into motion and I follow, no matter how faltering my steps feel. There's a purpose now. He'll wake up, sooner or later, and I will be there. 

There's nothing to do but wait when we walk into the lobby of the medical center. It's fucking interminable. A never-ending fight to stop myself from screaming at the top of my lungs. I lose track of time as Natasha comes and goes, getting herself cleaned up at some point, between whispering updates into my ear and pressing cups of something steaming into my palms. I don't think I drink them.

Tony stops by, awkward and abrasive, but I appreciate it nonetheless. Tony does hospitals as minimally as he does getting stuff handed to him. An alarm sounds in the distance, and then Natasha and Tony both check their phones. They leave me there, sitting in one of the comfortable chairs Tony had insisted on for the facility.

There's an inhuman roar coming from behind the set of doors my friends disappeared through, followed by an ominous thumping that shakes the pictures on the walls. Claxons wail with all the enthusiasm of a crying baby during a midnight showing of a movie. 

The door crashes open, and Loki runs through, wearing a torn hospital wrap. He looks like shit; bruises already mottled yellow and green over deep, dark purple, scrapes and cuts newly stitched. His eyes are wild, but what I really notice is his head. The left side of his hair is shaved to the skin, and the rest is shorter and ragged. This was done to accommodate all the staples holding a curvy flap of scalp in place.  _No wonder he's so pissed off._

I'm still so happy to see him that I just don't realize... He barrels into me, sweeping me off my feet, holding me in front of him in a weird parody of a hug as Tony stomps through the mangled door encased in one of his suits.

"Put the girl down," Tony says sternly, his voice made ominous by the fact that it is also piped loudly in through the speakers in the ceiling. I am beyond confused by these events. He hardly ever puts on one of his suits these days.

"Loki?" I ask, voice quavering wildly around two simple syllables, as I try to twist around. Try to get him to look at me, because I know that he'll recognize me. 

"Put the girl down," Tony repeats, a lot more menacing, but also, this time something whirs inside his suit.

I don't like feeling paralyzed by fear and being a hostage is really not my style. Loki, Natasha and Clint, and even  _Thor_  years ago, before he moved away with Jane, have trained with me for innumerable hours, and I've been in this  _exact_  same position countless times.

Generally speaking, Iron Man wasn't gearing up to shoot the man I love, but one thing I've learned working first with Jane and then Tony and the team over the last, like, _17 years_ is to be flexible. Crazy shit happens all the fucking time, and you can't just freak out because it is. 

I'm mostly worried about Loki. What I'm about to do will definitely hurt him, and he's already all messed up. I don't want to make it worse, but I have to take myself out of the equation for everyone's safety.

It's decided for me when I glimpse Natasha out of the corner of my eye, because she's got a big syringe gripped firmly in her hand as she stalks nimbly and expertly behind Loki while his attention is on Tony. I'm assuming the syringe will bring all this to a more peaceful resolution, and I trust Nat implicitly.

Holding my hand out to Tony, signaling frantically for him to wait, I take a deep breath and stab my elbow as hard as I can into Loki's bruised left side. His grip on me loosens and Natasha hops up and plunges the needle deep in the side of his neck. The bright blue liquid is gone in an instant. 

Loki slumps to the floor, unconscious and bleeding from popped stitches and staples.

Tony's face piece clicks and slides up and he grimaces at me, "Sorry." He picks up the limp form of Loki with more care than I expected. "He's going to be OK." His assurance rings hollow.

Loki's not the same person, though. He's someone else who doesn't know me, who doesn't know  _us_ , and my heart breaks into smaller and smaller pieces the more time we spend together.

* * *

** 2026 - Day 3883 / Day 5 **

He's healed enough to be released from the hospital room, and he's no longer trying to rip apart the ward to get out, which is fantastic. But he also looks at me with a coolness I remember from the first year we were in each other's orbits.

I tell myself over and over that it's temporary, but he refuses to believe that the pictures I show him - images of our life together - are real. Trying to convince him just infuriates him.

Loki wants to go home, meaning Asgard, and I don't have it in me to explain why he can't. Thor does it, on a special trip I'm not privy to, and he's gone before I even know to ask how it went. I try not to be upset that Thor couldn't take two goddamned minutes to talk to me, if not because we're supposed to be friends than to be kept in the loop about Loki. I try _really_ hard to be chill. Occasionally I succeed.

Tony offers me the house in the tropics, and tells me to get out of dodge, to use my vacation time and leave them all behind for a while. I'm about to decline, but he tells me I can take Loki with me and I can't agree fast enough. 

Sullen and cranky Loki. Loki who doesn't remember me. Doesn't seem to remember a lot, in fact, when he deigns to speak. What could go wrong?

Everything. 

He hates sand. He hates heat. He hates the bugs and lizards and food.

He hates me. 

We spend more time avoiding each other the first week than anything else, and I don't cry. I keep smiling and making jokes when he nears me, keep making the meals he used to stuff his face with gleefully, keep on keeping on, because he'll remember sooner or later. He has to.  _Right?_

The second week I burn, literally and figuratively. I forget sunscreen one morning and my skin turns bright red and painful. Loki finds me in the afternoon, trying to put lotion on, but he doesn't make a move to help.

He watches me struggling and makes some remark about immodest bathing costumes. It's not worse than anything else he's said to me since we arrived, but I can't handle anything else. 

I close the door in his face and sob. 

I don't cook that night. I don't come out of my room, in fact, just sit on the chair next to the sliding glass door that leads straight to the beach and stare.

It was never going to be forever for us. I knew that going in. Marriage: out of the question. Kids: not gonna happen. That was fine with me; I'd never really wanted either. I did want him, though.

It's fucked up; I'd hoped he'd leave eventually. I didn't doubt his permanency, I doubted mine. I was the one who would get old and gray and die. If he stayed until the end, which I had hoped he wouldn't, I would kick the proverbial bucket long before him.  _Mortal_ , he used to call me - call all of us. It reminded him not to get too attached.

I thought I was doing a good job preparing for that moment in the future, for the inevitability of our parting. 

I just thought I'd have more time. 

Lewis he calls me now. I think I prefer  _Mortal_.

"Lewis, it's time to go," he tells me a week later.

Loki pities me. I can see it in his face, and it's harder than the hate, heavy like a weight in my heart. He's come to realize that we were intimate, that there were no lies in the pictures and videos of us. He just doesn't feel the same anymore.

His hand on the small of my back as we climb into the quin-jet come to take us back to New York feels so familiar. His face as he sleeps on our flight home is the same face I've woken up to countless times.

I exit the jet without waking him up.

* * *

** 2026 - Day 3971 / Day 93 **

The absence of his things is in our apartment takes me by surprise sometimes.

I still start to text him when I find wet clothes in the dryer. 

I still cook enough for an army.

I still reach for him in the dark.

* * *

** 2028 - Day 4639 / Day 761 **

My phone rings one night. It's been two years since I moved out of the Tower. Two years since I packed up and left a life I didn't fit into anymore.

I let it ring through to voicemail.

The third time, Ian turns on the light, hair a scruffy mess, "Aren't you going to answer that?" 

I do, finally recognizing the ringtone.

Natasha sounds panicky. "Get out, get out right now," she screams it into my ear and I obey unthinkingly, dragging Ian in his boxers and my cat outside, just in time to see a quin-jet squash my carefully tended flower bed. Lights flicker on around my quiet block, doors open, faces peer behind curtains twitched to the side.

She's hanging out of the open door, waving us in through the storm of wind. Her hand in mine as she pulls me inside is cool and dry and familiar.

I turn as the door closes, and my little house blows up.

My cat squeaks in protest as I squeeze her tight, fighting to stand against the brief knock of the concussive wave, unable to process what has happened.

Natasha guides me to a seat and straps me in next to Ian, who looks a little sick and a lot scared as he struggles to pull on a grey t-shirt. He doesn't seem to realize at that the harness he's buckled into makes his attempts impossible. I try not to judge him.

He holds my hand as we speed away. It's sweaty and hot, and he won't let go.

"That was close," Loki says from the door to the cockpit, attention on Natasha, and not on me, the ex who has Moved On. I wonder if he even thinks of me that way, or if I'm just something that happened theoretically. 

Naomi Campbell, my horribly entitled Siamese cat, squeaks again and Loki finally,  _finally_  looks at me. How had I forgotten what that feels like?

I watch the way his mouth shapes words, the way his face moves, "I'm sorry."

Me, too.

* * *

"Tell me everything," Natasha says. 

It feels like gossiping with a girlfriend, not like an interrogation, but she's always been good like that. I've missed her face.

It's still embarrassing to admit that I'd taken Ian home after one date. A meeting, like kismet, at my coffee shop while he was in town for a conference had ended with a bang. Natasha doesn't laugh, and my own is more like a cough. I shrug, punch drunk from the events of just a few hours, "It wasn't that good. Oh, shit. Is that on the record?" 

Natasha is a professional, God bless her, but I can hear the chortle she hides with a fake sneeze. "Of course it is."

Well, _fuck_.

* * *

Loki waits in the hallway to escort me to my room, which is thankfully nowhere near the ones we'd shared, once.

He walks with the stillness I recognize, the one that means he's  _thinking_.

All the time apart I thought I'd managed it - I'd finally crossed the bridge and was over it. I can see now that was a foolish presumption. Packing up his stuff and putting away our life didn't do it. Moving to a different state didn't do it. Opening up my coffee shop didn't do it, sleeping with other people didn't do it. 

What will?

He hands over a paper bag, soft and squishy with clothes, which are wrapped around something cylindrical and hard. I try to thank him, but he shrugs it off with a  _Natasha arranged it._ Loki surprises me by lingering in the doorway instead of just leaving me to my own devices.

"Come in," I tell him, and my cat pounces at the sound of my voice, clawing her way up the too-big sweatpants I've cinched at my waist. I carefully dislodge her, holding her close, until she swats my face to be let down. 

Loki takes up so much space in the tiny studio I've been relegated to. I step away, putting Naomi Campbell on the bed as gently as I can. 

We were closer than two people had any right to be, once. Loki had been my friend, too, and I could almost be happy to be just that again. Except I can't... what I feel for him is too mixed up with guilt and resentment and grief, still. Especially now. After everything.

Turning back to my gift bag, I can't for the life of me figure out how to open the bottle, and frustration brings tears I haven't been able to shed yet.

It hits me: Everything is gone. 

My whole life, poof. Up in smoke. 

I bite my fist, trying to contain my grief, trying to stick a cork in it. But something must have been shaken loose. 

His arms around me are warm and strong and I cling as he lifts me and carries me to the big, unfamiliar bed. I fall asleep with tears streaming, and an awkward hand stroking my back. It's not the same. The fact that it won't ever be again, follows me in my dreams.

* * *

Naomi Campbell wakes me promptly at six and expects to be fed. She's done me a solid and used the toilet, but I know from experience that her goodwill won't last unless she gets what she wants.

I look like death, and washing up doesn't help at all. Still, I have to brave the day, and Natasha's workout gear will keep me decent while I blow at least half of the stack of cash she'd tucked in the bag yesterday on cat food and toys. I can't do much, but I can spoil my pet.

Jar-2 tells me that I need an escort to leave, and I figure that's probably not a bad idea, expecting Nat or one of the noobs. The knock at my door is all Loki, and I stomp my foot and curse the fates briefly before I open it. 

"Ian has returned to England", he says without preamble, and I don't know whether I'm relieved that I don't have to say goodbye or pissed that Loki's the one to tell me. 

Naomi Campbell hisses at him before running into the bathroom.

Ian doesn't matter in the long run.

I explain what I need again, emphasizing the importance of cat food ASAP. Loki tugs two things out of his back pocket: a foil packet of organic cat food, and a StarkPhone XX.  He waves away my sincere thanks to look at a map I assume Jar-2 forwarded to him. He nods like he's satisfied that the destination is acceptable, and asks if I'm ready.

There's a thousand bucks in fifties stuffed uncomfortably in my cleavage. 

I nod.

* * *

** 2028 - Day 4705 / Day 827 **

It gets better, as weeks pass into months. I do odd jobs around Tony's office; make some money doing old, familiar tasks. I'm given an actual apartment, and I don't care that it's decorated straight out of a big-box furniture store. Naomi Campbell takes it over with cat toys and boxes and increasingly elaborate cat trees she mostly ignores. I don't mind that it feels transient. The original gang isn't all here, so it's easy to skip out on invitations to eat, drink or hang. 

I only see Loki in passing as I wait. It only aches a little.

I don't know what I'm waiting for. Stark would float me a loan if I really wanted to leave.

Jane's arrival heralds changes I hadn't expected.

She's been gone so long, and she looks... like the very best version of herself. I wave away her explanations of not being there, because well, being an Ambassador in a different realm definitely takes precedence. It's hard to be mad about her absence when she's been dealing with royal intrigue and war and rebellion, but I sort of hate her for being impossibly more beautiful than ever when tears leave dew on her eyelashes. 

"Still," she says, as her hand covers mine, "I know how hard it was for you after Loki, and I should have... I wish... I'm so sorry."

There's nothing worse than sympathy sometimes.

Happy bursts in, skidding through the door like he's Kramer, "We got the bastards!"

* * *

** 2028 - Day 4717 / Day 839 **

How do I decide where to go from here?

My insurance company has finally paid out on my house and car. And of course, all of my possessions. Turns out there really is a price on the priceless. I swallow the bitterness and move on. I am ruthless in negotiating the sale of my coffee shop.

I thought that the money, a small fortune even after paying my debts, would be enough to make up for the slight, but I'm never getting my grandma's voice on an old tape back, I'm not getting the shot glass I bought in Oslo back. The first love letter written to me, burned to a crisp.

I actually might scream at the next person who 'tells' me about the cloud. Fuck the cloud. It's a pain in my ass. Of course, if I'd have been less lazy, I'd still have most of my pictures. How I've not told anyone to eat a bag of dicks, I don't know, but I've come this far...

I end up spinning the decorative globe in my paint-by-numbers living room and stabbing at it randomly with my eyes closed for ideas. It takes four tries to get something that isn't just Lady Luck trolling me (Baghdad twice, and the middle of the Gobi desert once), but I think I could do Hawaii. Maybe I'll get a tan. 

My choice of a destination for my relocation has nothing to do with the fact that I know Loki would hate it.

* * *

** 2028 - Day 4729 / Day 851 **

It surprises me how quickly an exit strategy can be formed when I put my mind to it, and my farewell party happens to fall right when Thor comes into town, ostensibly to take his wife home.

Natasha stops by before the party starts, and she's nervous like she never is until she shoves a file folder into my hands. "Sorry. You were doing it wrong."

Inside, there's a title for the small, run down motel I thought I'd missed out on, not too far from a rocky beach. I had been sad to have lost out on it, despite Yelp reviews agreeing that it was a roach and rat infested shithole. A passport with my face matches the unfamiliar name on the documents I rifle through, and I recognize her penmanship in the signature of my lawyer. 

I hug her, because words don't seem to work.

She's leaving when I give her back her clothes - the workout gear she'd arranged for me all those months ago that I've somehow never returned. She almost smiles when she feels the bottle of vodka, and she'll find the money later.

We both don't cry.

* * *

"Little lightning sister," he says from behind me.

 _Damnit_.

I know his sad puppy dog voice, and I don't want to turn around. He's right, though, we were close. Once. 

As I turn to face him, I wish my smile was real. It  _is_  great to see him, but it's been something like five years since we've even spoken to each other, so  _no_. He's not my Thunder Buddy anymore. Or I don't want him to be, which is close enough, really.

"I wish it was different," Thor, God of Thunder, says. He runs a massive thumb across my cheek, blue eyes as kind as they've always been. He seems fundamentally changed, though, like he's finally grown into the person he wanted, or maybe, was meant to be.

Our moment is exactly that: a moment, before he's noticed and pulled in a new direction. I flap a hand at my own invitations to join various groups as I make my way through the den, mouthing  _bathroom_  as explanation. I turn in the doorway and admire my friends and their growing families. 

I've never been good at goodbyes.

* * *

Naomi Campbell hates being confined, so she's been sent first class Pet Delivery for the trip. It's weird not to hear her squawking indignantly from inside her carrier, but she's better off leaving my side until we get to our new home, so I comfort myself with the fact that I'll be there quick as I can.

Natasha still keeps a set of car keys in a secret panel in the elevator. I click the lock button and am mildly horrified by the Rolls-Royce blinking back at me.

According to Natasha's papers, I'm moderately well-off after buying the motel, but will probably be broke after renovating. I slide into the seat, and am scanned by the security system. It reaches the key fob, and cuts out abruptly. "Welcome to the Phantom."

"Start?" I ask.

The interior turns on and a touch pad between the front seats illuminates.  **Auto-Drive**  blinks insistently. I take my fiscal future into my hands and I ignore it.

_Fuck it. What was it we used to say back in the day?_

_YOLO!_

_God, I'm old._

Lack of a gear shift means I can't slam it into reverse and then take it through its gears, but I make do and set a personal best time to the airport. 

I'm waiting for the flight to board when he finds me.

Seriously unfair.

He's flushed; his hair looks like he hasn't put a brush to it in days. I'd avoided him at the party for a reason ( _for 4729 reasons; for my poor, battered heart_ ).

I don't smile. I can't.

He does, like a sunrise.

I love him.

I do.

I have.

I will. Maybe always.

He hands me a package, "I meant to give this to you before you left, but..." His voice trails off.

The brown paper has been tortured into wrapping its burden and it takes no effort to make it give up its prize. I breathe on it and the paper rips open. It's a shoebox, and I recognize it with something like horror.

I thought I'd kept it when the Great Divide happened, despite going through the torture of putting it together. I thought it had burned like everything else. I had a perfectly clean slate for a minute there...

The presence of the box here, mocking me, made my assumption of its destruction not my brightest moment.

"Open it when you get where you're going."

Forcing my lips to curl up makes my whole face hurt, and saying  _thank you_ turns out to be impossible. I pat the box as my flight is called, "See ya."

 _Shit_. I didn't mean that.

"Promise?" I can't figure out if he sounds hopeful or what, but I cannot care about this anymore. I just can't.

I shake my head as I walk away.  _Fuck. No_. 

Everything that was left between us in in this box, so there's no reason to. 

**2028 -** ~~Day 4729  /~~ **Day 851 / Day 1**

* * *

** 2029 - Day 1093 / Day 242 **

I have worked my fingers to the bone. I have dealt with recalcitrant contractors. I have vanquished stubborn vermin. I have shoveled my way through literal shit. I have eaten more council member ass than I thought possible, and now I'm officially open for business and the feeling of accomplishment is so totally _worth it_. 

I have no reservations.

I don't mind. I can make it for a few months before my situation officially becomes dire.

* * *

** 2031 - Day 2003 / Day 1152 **

Two summers later, I think I've found my footing. Rocky beach aside, there's coves up the road that are perfect for the more daring surfer. Plus, I offer free breakfast, so...

There was nothing different about the request for the key to be left in my mailbox out by the road if someone is checking in super late after hours.

Natasha making coffee in the communal outdoor kitchen at seven in the morning was definitely new, absolutely different. Her hair looks fantastic.

I sputter. Not words or anything. Just...  _Blergh_. Admittedly, the reaction's a bit delayed. 

What else am I supposed to do, though? My faculties have deserted me.

"Don't freak," she says.

Loki walks around the corner, in shorts and a t-shirt, like some almost forgotten fever dream. 

I'd like to say that my motto has been  _Don't be an Asshole_ since high school. That would make me seem like a pretty awesome, enlightened person. It's actually been _Be Cool_. That's all I ever wanted to be back then; _cool_.

Super. Chill.

Totally. Frosty.

I didn't ever quite manage it then.

He smiles.

I apparently still can't manage it now.

I am  _Forty Fucking Years Old_. I shouldn't get wet just looking at this guy anymore.

Why does he look the same?

Never mind. 

 _Of course_  he looks the same.

I make his coffee on autopilot, like I did at least a thousand times, but drink it myself when he makes tea, like I totally meant to add a shit-ton of cream and sugar to my cup.

Generally speaking, I make a great big breakfast to go with my beds, but I've only got these two "guests" for the next week. A surfing event a few towns over has stolen my semi-regular customers, which blows. Other people around would be pretty great right about now.

Instead, I leave a couple of loaves of bread and the butter out, under a bug-proof dome and leave arrows I make out of post-its that lead to the eggs in the fridge and the spam in the pantry.

A year ago, a couple of stoners made a tree house out of a couch and a stack of pallets. Even if conventional wisdom (not to mention my insurance policy) dictated I take it down, I hadn't yet.

Thank god.

After booking it outta there, leaving my only paying customers in the lurch, I sit in a tree, on an old couch and listen to the leaves and the waves. I let hours pass me by and think of nothing like it is the most important thing I've ever done. It's the weirdest meditation and it doesn't do shit. I find no center or calm, and peace mocks me from the distant shores of Valinor.

Am I being dramatic? Absolutely.

I'm starving by lunchtime, having skipped breakfast, and walking to the nearest place that serves food is not going to happen. I can't abandon my home just because I have unexpected guests.

Naomi Campbell is sitting next to Loki when I lumber into my outdoor kitchen area. She seems comfortable, which is shocking, but totally par for the course. He smiles at me, blushing a little, and if this were still before his head injury and subsequent amnesia, I would have known just by that alone that he'd been thinking of sex. With me.

But it's not BA ( _Before Amnesia_ ), so who knows what exactly is going on in that head of his. 

"Hello," Loki says, like I hadn't lit out of there like I was on fire not even a few hours ago. As if we're... friends still.

"Why are you here?" I ask. I'm hungry and that fucking tree-couch isn't terribly comfortable, so yes, I'm a bit irritable. Actually, I'm pretty fucking pissed off.

"I thought," he starts, eyes startlingly, intensely sea green, mouth working like he's trying on words for size. "I thought you'd come back."

The smile on my face is a bitter and twisted thing. I laugh because I don't know what to do. "Why on earth would I?" 

He shrugs. I know he's doing the thing where he pauses dramatically before he continues, so I wait instead of rushing to fill the silence. Natasha always used to say that people were too quick to speak, if given a second of quiet. "Did you ever open the box?"

My neck feels like it's made out of Jell-O or maybe my head is suddenly too light, but either way, shaking my head makes the world dance crazily.

"Maybe you could?" he asks, and there's something in his voice I don't care to recall.

I touch Naomi Campbell on the head, absolving her of her traitorous sins, and get up to go inside. His whispered  _please_  follows me as I shut the door firmly between us.

The box is buried somewhere in my closet. It's been sitting there since I moved in, more and more stuff heaped on top of it until was completely out of sight, and thus out of mind.

It doesn't look like much when it sits on my bed, just an old Nike shoebox, but I know enough to brace myself when I open it.

The curl of shiny paper at the top is a strip of three pictures. Loki hadn't understood the point at the time, so he stares solemnly from the pictures while I make goofy faces.

I set it aside.

There's a single sock folded up - limited edition Avengers gear, the first time Loki's horns were included with the other insignia. I'd had the mate in a similar box of my own. The stack of Polaroid’s are held together with a rubber band that disintegrates when I touch it. Our life together, Loki's and mine, spills across my bedspread. I used to smile a lot, apparently.

There's old post it notes floating around loose and I recognize my handwriting, and the embarrassing way I used to sign them.

_Please get milk <3 D_

_Leave another number 2 unflushed and I'll do something unspeakable to your socks <3 D_

_Breakfast in fridge <3 D_

_Be safe <3 D_

I stack the remainder, but don't look at the rest of the messages from another time.

There's a bunch of single movie tickets, and again, I'd had their mates, once.

Why had I given him all of this? Why had I bothered to keep it all in the first place?

I chuckle at the 3 tickets to Gho5tbu5ter5: The 5ening -  **Who Ya Gonna Tweet?**  [Sponsored by Twitter]. The man did love him some Ghostbusters. 

The concert tickets are fewer between, but there's a ton of musical theater tickets. I'd forgotten how much he'd liked Hamilton.

There are too many memories, and part of me wants to scoop it all up and throw it across the room, but I keep sifting until there's one thing left. I don't remember it specifically, but it's a plain black notebook - pocket sized. The same kind the Tower shrink had given me when I'd been counseled. I'd wake up in the middle of the night, consumed by a thought and writing it down usually let me go back to sleep. In the light of day, my night-scribbles were names or places, occasionally a phrase that resonated despite being nonsense. This one isn't mine. Mine had Lisa Frank stickers all over it.

I probably shouldn't open it.

I flip the cover.

I've never been good at not doing what I shouldn't.

_Woke up, missing something._

_Came back from a mission. Looked around for something I didn't find_

_What is wrong with me_

_I had a sex dream about her. It didn't feel like a dream_

_I remember singing and lighting candles_

_What am I looking for     where are_

_You._   _You  . Who are you _

_please_

_~~i miss you~~ _

I don't know how many times I thumb through the handwritten notes. Most didn't make sense but the few that did, make me trace their shapes with my index finger.

The hunger I'd forgotten about reminds me with a particularly vicious growl that I haven't eaten yet. I'd wish I offered room service, except I'd be doing the delivery, so...

Sighing heavily, I scrub my face with my palms. 

It's not like I've had potentially life-altering discoveries and might want to be with my thoughts, or not, but biology defeated that plan. 

He's not lounging around outside, so maybe the universe isn't trying purposely to drive me insane. I make eggs and spam, heating up last night’s rice to go along, and it's freaking awesome. I eat like a person possessed.

Chores like leaf sweeping aren't going to do themselves, so I start working. Slowly at first, but pretty soon the sun is touching the horizon and I drop my rag and stare. 

Life goes on. It's never stopped, even if I did, once. I like my life now. It's different and hard and sometimes it's lonely, but I can't let it go. I won't. 

I am missing pieces, but I am wholly well.

When was the last time I could say that?

It felt like it was punishment that he's here, disturbing my hard won equilibrium. Now I know throwing oil on the choppy sea might calm waves, but it is vulnerable to sparks. 

Tires crunch through my gravel, ending my question about where my wayward guests had gotten to. Normally I didn't provide dinner, but these were technically friends. I grilled a few ( _all five pounds that was left in my freezer_ ) chicken thighs and made extra chickpea salad. 

When they fall over themselves at the prospect of dinner, I chop up most of the vegetables that seem ripe enough to eat. 

They emerge from their rooms simultaneously, which is imminently preferable to meeting Loki alone, but perhaps having time with Nat alone would have been nice.

Nonetheless, it is good to play host, spreading a feast for the visiting prince and hero.

Natasha sits up with me after Loki excuses himself, and I break out the  _good_  vodka in my freezer. I usually turn off the music at 8, but the lack of real customers means that I can do whatever I like, so I curate an old school playlist. 

Natasha laughs when she notices what I'm doing, "I'm so happy something’s never change!" She skips to the beat, a complicated foot exercise I'm sure is some sort of ballet, till she reaches the vodka. "Get Darcy drunk and watch her turn into a wannabe DJ."

I would protest, except it's absolutely true.

* * *

That much drinking last night was definitely a complete mistake. I'm way, _way_ too old for it. No matter how I feel, though, I have guests. I force myself to fall out of my bed and stagger to the bathroom. I take some aspirin with tepid water out of the tap, strip and take such a long shower I nearly feel human by the end of it. 

There is no fucking way I'm making eggs. Just the thought makes me gag a little.

Fruit will just have to do. I notice that Nat has left me a note next to the coffee maker:  _Gone surfing ~_

I would normally find this little ploy adorably  _Natasha_ , but now I snort a little, disbelieving. It's rather obvious for one of her plots, but she does tend to go for the brute force approach when she's feeling rushed. 

Coffee made, fruit displayed, I am tempted to lock myself in my office, but I don't. I curl up with my laptop on the shaded deck off the kitchen, enjoying the sea breeze while I make sure there's still reservations coming in soon. I can't charge these people for my hospitality. I just can't. Even if it had probably been paid for out of Tony's vast store of money. I click through the refund process.

The sounds of the island lulls me just enough to fall asleep at the keys. 

The dream is _so real._

It's been so long since I've had one like this, but I'd half expected it. I see his face as it had been so long ago, as it still is, I suppose, so the real difference between then and now is his expression. The warmth of his gaze, God, I've missed it. His arms around me, the way his strength would never hurt me. 

I'd had no real family when I'd taken the job as Jane's intern. Somehow, that one, tiny decision had led me to one. And that's what he'd been. Loki had been my family, or at least, the biggest part of it. I dream now of the family I've lost and the family I've left. 

A firm shake of my shoulder wakes me abruptly. I feel tears leaking down my face, and my eyes are cloudy with them, so I have to blink repeatedly to clear my vision. 

Loki looks concerned, and for a second I'm not sure what is real and dream. 

"Sorry," he says, stepping back, putting distance between us. 

I nod, "It's fine, I'm fine. Thanks." 

"No, I am," sincerity rings in his voice. He stands there, silhouetted by the sun, a familiar shape in a familiar landscape he doesn't belong in.

Gesturing to the opposite chair, I tell him to have a seat if he wants. I can do this, I can talk about it, about us. If he wants. 

Loki hesitates for so long I think he's just going to walk away, but he sits and his face is revealed. He used to get homesick sometimes, not that he ever admitted it, but I knew when he longed for Asgard. For a reprieve from Earth. Like knows like, as they say, but at least I can find my Grandma in her chocolate chip cookie recipe. Either way, that's the expression he wears now, briefly, before he smooths it away.

On impulse I lean forward after tucking my laptop to the side, and put my hand on top of his, where sits on the armrest. "You've apologized to me more since you lost your memory that you ever did before... Stop. Please. You didn't exactly do it on purpose. We're cool, you and me," I withdraw my hand. 

He's quiet for a while, gaze drifting from me to the sliver of the ocean visible through the dense vegetation. It's hot, so we're both sweating, but the wind keeps it bearable. I can almost forget how much his absence hurt when he's sitting there so still and peaceful. 

"How much do you remember?" Curiosity killed the cat, but I hope it won't do more than maim me.

He shrugs, still looking off in the distance and shifts in the chair like he can't quite get comfortable. The silence stretches between us like a gulf neither of us can figure out how to bridge.

"I don't know everything, but I know you loved me, before."

"How long?" It's torn out of me. He looks abashed. "How long?" 

"Always. I always knew to a certain extent. You made it unavoidable." He might as well have ripped my heart out of my chest. "And more as you were around." His eyes are shadowed. "I  _am_  sorry I didn't understand that... I used to look at the stuff in that box, Lewis. I used to wonder why you left when you loved me," the corner of his mouth twists up, and I twitch when he says  _loved_. "And then I remembered I always called you Darcy, and that you could light up a room with your smile."

Loki glances at me, catching my eyes, and gives me a wry grin, "I used to wake up, for no reason, in the middle of the night. And I'd pat the spot next to me, the emptiness, looking for something. I finally realized it was you and the pieces of us I lost."

"You act like I left willy-nilly. Like I had a choice. Loki, do you honestly think I wanted to let you go? Because I didn't. It hurt. It hurt to see you, to talk to you, to smell you. It was fucking agony, alright, like losing an arm to see you look at me like I was some sort of trap that was getting ready to spring on you. To see you duck around corners to avoid me. You used to love me, too. And then you just didn't.

And when you didn't seem to be remembering anything about us, what was the point of sticking around, when you didn't seem to care?" I try to settle the rising anger, to reign in the blame that seeps into my words.

"I didn't want to hurt you worse. I wasn't prepared to be a consolation prize, to make us both miserable. I hoped you were happy, and if you weren't, I was worried hearing from me would make it worse for you," he speaks in that horribly familiar  _reasonable_  tone of voice. 

I realize something. 

He's here.

Loki Friggason is here. Not Loki Odinson, not Loki Laufeyson, not the God of Mischief.

His mother's son. The man I fell in love with. 

Who cares about being cool? 

I thought I stopped counting. I'd counted the days I loved him. 4729 days and I'd let it go. I'd never admitted it to myself, but I was always counting. My life was a series of beats whose time I tried to keep. He seemed to be the one I'd synced myself to.

2004 days since he'd forgotten me. 

Almost 17 years since we first kissed. I had been so nervous, as I took him to his first movie, I hadn't been able to enjoy it. He'd wrapped an arm around me in the theater that night, and I remember looking over at him. He'd glanced at me, and in the colorful shadows of an almost empty showing of Ghostbusters, we kissed.

I lever myself out of my chair, staggering a bit.

I'm not sure if I want to get away or if I want to get closer to him.

Away seems safer.

His hand comes out of nowhere and snags my wrist. "Don't."

Loki is one of the strongest beings in any of the realms. He let go of his brother’s hand, he didn't slip. He's had ample opportunity to rip me into pieces, so I let my arm linger in his grasp.

"I don't know if I have it in me to do this again," I whisper, as he pulls me to him. 

Sometimes I forget that he's an apex predator. His teeth flash as he tugs me, a smile as sharp as sharks, and I fall across his lap. 

"One day, Darcy. Just one day," his voice is silk as the sun burns bright and hot in the sky. My hangover is long forgotten.

Time seems a fluid, ever-shifting thing, past and present mingling like the spices in a good chai.

 _Just one time won't be enough, you know it won't. That's it. Tell me, tell me, tell me._..

I try not to rejoice at the sound of my name on his lips. Two small syllables, Dar-Cee, childishly simple, shortened into a nonsense sound, Darce. He never called me that, licking over the shapes my name like it was something delicious. He does the same now.

"Darcy," I can feel him, hard under me, as he caresses my name with those lips I'd missed so much. 

"Loki," I answer and press my lips to his. 

It's not like it used to be, smooth and practiced. Our teeth clack together, our tongues bump instead of dance, my nose is squished into the side of his face. 

I push on his chest as I lean back. I probe my lower lip with my fingertips as I look at him. It feels tender and swollen, but they come away clean when I pull them back for inspection.

The second kiss is better; the old rhythm is suddenly there, his hand nestling the back of my head, fingers anchored in my short curls.

Loki gives me a crooked smile I recognize easily;  _See, I know what I'm doing._

I feel like a time traveler, and it's disorienting.

The first time we'd had sex, it was fast and uncomfortable, in the front seat of a car with the seatbelt thing digging into my shin as I'd straddled him gracelessly. The skirt I'd worn that night was the only reason we'd been able to manage that, but we were in such a hurry, I suppose we might have figured it out either way. It was terrible and awesome, and up until that point, the best I'd ever had.

After, when it was over, the car reeked of sex and condensation on the windows had started to drip, and I was trying to get off him to slide back into the driver’s seat so we could leave the parking lot, he'd looked so bewildered by the events that I hadn't been able to contain a flush of pride: I did that.

 _What was that?_  he'd asked.

 _That was us, I guess_ , I'd answered easily as I reached out and smoothed back his hair.

"What is this?" he asks now, lips still pressed against my neck, heat and arousal arcing between us, achingly familiar for me, but not for him.

"Us."

* * *

** 2031 - Day 1 **

Loki wakes me up, not with words or with touches or kisses. I feel, even though the thick veil of sleep, a change, the return of his natural watchfulness. He'd hardly ever sleep through the night, so I'm not surprised. I'd probably been waiting for it.

It's early - still dark out. I can't make out much of the room, but I don't have to.

His arm is still around me and I am still pressed half on top of him, my leg thrown across his. It's not a subtle message. He's a smart guy, I'm pretty sure he gets it. Loki's heart beats steadily in my ear, and I can't quite believe I am back here again. 

"You're awake," he says, slowly, voice deep and gravelly. Sometimes I swear, just the sound of him is enough to make me...

"Yeah," I agree, and I wish I could calm my racing heart. 

"I want to stay," he says, without preamble.

I hold my breath for the  _but_ , because surely there's one coming.

"Can I?" he asks, surprises me with the naked plea in his tone.

I have lost the ability to speak, so I nod, rubbing my face into his chest. 

"Good. Good," his arm tightens around me, pressing me more firmly into him. 

We stay like that, quietly wrapped up in our thoughts, in each other, and if I let myself, I could just fall right back to sleep. I won't though; I can't take the chance that he'll slip away, not right now. Later, that's for later. For now I can bask a little - I've earned a bit of that.

"Darcy Lewis?" the way he says my name shivers through me, curls my toes.

"Yes, Loki Friggason?" I shift around a bit so I can prop my chin in the hand I lay on his chest. I can see the shine of his eyes, if not their color. 

"I finally feel like I'm home."

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been tinkering with this for a while, to the detriment of LTD, but I'll be hopping back on that once this is done. This one just wouldn't leave me alone. 
> 
> As always, feedback would be most appreciated.


	2. This Real, It's Impossible

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki's POV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This became much longer than anticipated, and it literally shut down my kindle in the middle of writing it several times, so mistakes are in here, and they can just suck it. I will go batshit if I have to review it again.

_beep              beeep,      beep       beeep,    beep     beeep,   beep    beeep,  beep  beeep, beep beeep, beep-beeep, beepbeeep, beepbeeepbeepbeeep_

* * *

   _…we've got a pulse_

_...blood pressure stabilizing_

_…heart rate normal, but rising_

_…he might actually pull through this_

* * *

I wake abruptly, like a lightning bolt jolts straight through my heart. I try to open my eyes, but I can't. They're being held shut, and something dark and familiar scuttles around under my skin. My limbs are firmly tied, but I test the bonds anyway, satisfied when they give easily with a ripping and popping sound.

I will never admit the moment of pure irrational terror had nothing to do with the thought of impending blindness. 

"How is he moving?"

"He's out of his restraints."

"Uhm, someone call Stark and Romanov. Now."

"Open up the valve on the gas; pump some more of the sedatives...

I don't know! I do humans! Sometimes mutants! These guys don't need us....

Damnit man! I'm a doctor, not a xenobiologist! Stop bothering me. Give him a bunch!"

"1000 ccs?"

"All of it! Now!"

While I enjoy causing chaos and pandemonium, I do prefer to at least witness it with my own eyes.

I ignore the voices and steer a clumsy hand towards my face. There are tubes pushed up my nostrils and I smell and feel the effects of a vaguely sweet and lazy gas. I yank it out before touching my eyes. There's some sort of sticky paper across the lids keeping them closed. I hold my breath as I peel first one then the other before getting a look at my captors.

_What the fuck?_

I surprise myself with the outburst. I am not prone to profanities. I cannot recollect a single instance where that precise combination of words has crossed my lips, but it still comes out with the ease of long use. Mother always says obscenities are the sign of an uneducated and base mind, and I tend to agree. It's nothing more than a slip of the tongue. I've a right to be upset.

This is not Asgard.

Terrified mortals of some sort ( _humans_ ) huddle in the corner, as I take in the fact that I am wearing basically nothing but a flimsy scrap of oddly textured cloth like paper. There are yet more tubes and needles stuck in me, and one shoved uncomfortably up my cock.

 _The bloody cheek._  

That cements it. I must leave immediately. I'll worry about inconveniences like modesty and decency when I am safely away from this place. The needles come out painlessly, but I don't seem to be healing as quickly as I should. The holes in my arms leak thick splats of blood on the floor, and I have to grip the bed behind me to steady myself.

I can stand - my arms work.

I touch my head and howl.

The lack of hair and the miniscule bits of something hard stuck in my scalp almost worry me, but it seems to have been done to secure a laceration stretching from my temple across the back of my head and down to my neck in place.

Still, I don't know what offends me more; the catheter or the injustice they'd done to my hair. Surely, there were alternatives?

My mind keeps wandering off like an untrained puppy; following whatever delicious scents it can find without regard for its master. I focus resolutely on the matter at hand. The humans in the corner keen as I prowl for a door, ripping it off the hinges with a dramatic flair. 

Best to leave them in awe. 

I tear down an unfamiliar hallway, yelling and charging at the guards that try to keep me back, while not engaging in actual combat. I am being hunted by some metal creature stomping determinedly somewhere in the labyrinth of identical corridors behind me. It's either freakishly lucky or it is being helped somehow, because it rounds a corner and spots me as I stand at a metal door.

The lit, red EXIT sign above the door might turn out to be rather  _too_  helpful, but options are thin. I wrench at the door as alarms wail cacophony around me until it gives way.

A woman stands there, eyes widening at the sight of me, joy clear on her face as I yank her off her feet and hold her in front of me - a hostage against the metal thing that continues to stalk me.

It gives me no pleasure to use this... my mind seems to have to search assign her an appropriate designation. It simply skips right past  _mortal, creature, peasant_  and settles on reluctantly back on Woman.

The room reverberates with the metal being's order to  _Put the girl down_.

For some reason, I am distinctly tickled by this, though I have no idea why. I shake off the curious dissociation. Needs must, there's time for confusion later. 

 _I'll hurt this Woman if you come near me_. I must get out. 

She keeps twisting and turning in my arms, my name on her lips, emotion I don't understand in her voice as she holds out a hand to stop the furious Automaton from attacking me.

_(No, there's a man in there. A man of metal, steel, ademantium? No, a knight, champion. A hero. A man._

…when they come, and they will, they’ll come for you...

_Iron._

I am Iron Man. _)_

My mind feels fractured, something strange pulling me out of my sense of self, my temporal anchor loose and scraping for the bottom of my memories and finding nothing.

I tighten my grip on sanity and the Woman

( _You're nothing more than grasping, greedy, weak, little female mortal with delusions of grandeur._

For the love of  **fuck** , do not call women females. Unless you definitely want to give the impression that you have a white van in an alley, and you need help getting a couch loaded, Buffalo Bill. Maybe that's your vibe, dude: super creepy predator who makes everyone uncomfortable because he's got no manners. But, who am I to judge, right? By all means... Do you, dude, do you.)

... the Woman still wriggling in my arms. My energy level is plunging and I need to get away, I don't have ti-

I am disoriented by the next aural assault. My ears ring

_the girl, the girl, the girl_

(Who the fuck raised you? Wolves? I'm not a  _girl_ , OK? Fuck me, Jane, you are not paying me enough!  _Shit. FuckFuckFuck._  Alright, I'm better now. Loki. Listen very carefully. Remember this: If you have to reduce me to my gender, at least call me Woman. I mean that's almost as bad, but...)

and I feel two things:

Agony, as she slams an elbow into my broken ribs. 

Confusion, as a slight weight barrels into my back and I drop the vicious little woman in my arms. 

I claw for the new threat, but sleep takes me before I can do anything but swan dive into the floor.

* * *

She sits there every time I surface to consciousness. 

Sometimes she reads to me, sometimes her hand is so close to mine I can almost feel its weight and warmth. Always she makes noise. She hums, fingers tap an unheard beat, her left foot thumps steadily, quietly, gently against the floor. She talks  _so much_ about nothing at all.

Once, I wake to her soft exhalations as she lays sleeping, mouth open, drooling into her pillowed hands, resting perilously close to my face.

_Go away._

_What makes you think you have the right?_

I'm fairly certain I actually speak these words to her, but she doesn't leave. 

Not until I ask her who she thinks she is. 

Healers ( _doctors_ ) and nurses and people who are under the mistaken impression that I should recognize them are an endless parade in and out of this white, sterile, maddeningly featureless chamber. 

* * *

  _memory loss_

_amnesia_

_temporal lobe damage_

_massive, traumatic head injury_

"It'll come back to you."

"Probably."

"It's entirely likely full recovery is possible."

"Entirely likely."

"Physiologically speaking the damage is repairing itself."

"It's entirely likely you'll be just the same. Eventually."

* * *

I'm not  _just the same_.

Whoever this mystery person they are waiting for is... I am simply not him.

I just want to go home. Even if these people are telling the truth and they are, in fact, rendering aide to a fallen comrade, I do not belong here.

* * *

After days of demanding my brother come to my sick room, he makes his appearance.

He never has learned how to tell a lie with any sort of competence. 

There's nothing left in Asgard for me.

_(There never was.)_

I do not need to understand the intricacies of my exile. More to the point, I do not want to. I have no desire for the life I had apparently crafted when my destiny is so much grander. This small existence described as mine nauseates me. I must've had a plan, some contingency against this tedious mediocrity.

She still keeps coming. She shows me pictures. I can't look at the person with my face. I can't reconcile the smiles with this reality I've woken up into, much less slip back into it like an old, comfortable shirt. 

I call her  _Mortal_  to her face, and my mind still whispers

_(Woman.)_

I mean to be cool and aloof, but she keeps shoving these things into my hands, so hopeful it's like a living thing in her eyes, and I cannot help the fury.

* * *

The mortal ( _Woman_ ) and I are carted off for a forced attempt to recapture what ( _who_ ) was lost. 

It's a disaster, naturally.

She's alluring enough, for someone whose charms are completely  _obvious_ ,

(What the fuck am I supposed to do, huh? I can't help being me!)

but she's blunt and uncouth. Every other word out of her mouth is an obscenity. I shouldn't be comforted by that. I shouldn't.

She expects reactions to jokes I do not understand, expects gratitude, I suppose, for her efforts to draw me out. 

I have none. I have nothing. I'm a bloody pastry shell someone forgot to fill. 

I loathe this place. I loathe her constant chattering, the eternal taptaptap, thumpthump. I especially hate that she flounces around in scraps of fabric that barely cover her - her  _bits and pieces_. It's disturbing how my eyes follow her form regardless of how I might feel about the matter. 

Finally, I've managed to make her cry. I've been attempting to for weeks, but it's a hollow victory to hear her sobs through a closed door. I'd imagined much more satisfaction, somehow.

I spend too much time looking through those pictures of us that night. 

Some part of me I do not acknowledge puts her name in my mouth, but I can't bear to call her anything too informal. I settle on Lewis, expecting that awful hope to spring up in her blue-blue eyes, but it doesn't. Their depths are dull, as if a fire has been extinguished.

That makes me... happy?

(Sure it does.

Douche.)

* * *

I pretend to sleep as she leaves our transport and she doesn't try to wake me.

She doesn't sneak an opportunity to touch me.

* * *

I train with another tiny, practically pocket sized, mortal woman. She has shiny, lustrous, red hair and cynicism to spare. She has the appeal, the same simple, obvious charms of Lewis, but she's dangerous in a way  _that Woman_  never had to learn to be.

As much as I am capable, I spar. My reflexes are off. My body feels so big, my extremities so long and cumbersome. I cannot seem to find the rhythm of my fight.

* * *

_dysmorphia_

_spatial disorientation_

_nerve damage_

"We need to run a few more tests."

"Draw more blood."

"Stay still. If you move, we'll have to do it over."

* * *

A year later, Natasha Romanov punches me in the face. It's something she's apparently always been fond of doing.

There's ground under my feet. It's the figurative kind, a foundation I imagine, and it allows me the leverage I need to redirect the hit and use the force in the swivel of my body to return a jab.

She grins through bloodied teeth, waving back her sycophants, those peons who worship the ground she walks on, with an impatient flick of her wrist. Natasha Romanov is  _fast._ She never, ever plays fair, and her hand whips out after her breast nearly makes a brief appearance, catching me in the throat with the flat of her palm, bringing me to the ground, choking. 

"Tsk, tsk," she wags her finger in my face before pulling me to my feet. She stands in front of me, body displayed to advantage in skin tight garments, heaving cleavage practically under my nose... beyond knee-jerk reactions, she's not interesting to me like that. 

I'd wonder why, but it's really quite unnecessary.

She, Darcy Lewis, left. She'd surprised them all, us, me. She'd shocked me. I don't know why, but I thought she'd stay.

"You ready?" Natasha asks bouncing on her feet, thumbing her nose at me.

I nod.

She leaps like a bloody gazelle, and her punch catches me in the temple. 

I see stars as I fall backward, getting a good look at the ceiling. 

("You: Fuck!/Asshole!/Dickhead!

I can't believe you.

I can't understand how you would think this is acceptable behavior.

Raised by wolves!

Wolves!

_Ragnarok will be heralded by a wolf in the sky..._

I'm not going anywhere, Loki.

I'm here.

Why don't you love me anymore?

I love you, Loki. Always...

Loki.)

"LOKI!" 

I shake it off. It happens sometimes, synapses firing, connections being made suddenly, and there it is. Quick as a snap of a pair of impatient fingers. A memory, an absurd glimpse into my nemesis, my doppelganger. 

"I'm fine," I tell her, brushing away her hand to get up by myself.

I dip my knees, widen my stance a little, hoping that a slightly lower center of gravity might help, "Ready when you are."

I do better this time, blocking and swerving, landing a few hits mostly by accident. Still counts.

There's a flow to this, it just seems to take a while to find it. There's hardly a better feeling than when I do. Kicking out I knock her over, and when I go to stomp her, she grabs my foot and _twists_. I sail through the air, falling face first into the mat for the umpteenth time today. She slithers across my body, yanking my left arm nearly out of socket.

I put my right hand flat against the floor, ready to tap out, I’m going to concede this one, I can’t fight more right now, but it's too late. Her shock weapon tucks under my chin and the charge hits me like a thousand horses kicking.

I can't do anything but let go.

I dread this.

(Darcy Lewis smiles at me. She's wearing a shapeless shirt, much too large. There's a pan and sputtering eggs at her fingertips, "Don't backseat cook!"

I kiss her temple and her body molds to mine.

"I got this. I can cook eggs. Go. Sit."

I hold on to her as she nudges me to the chairs at the table. 

She brushes those luscious lips across my forehead, "I love you, Loki.")

_Love you._

_You._

It still seems so  _unlikely_.

* * *

Natasha was a thief. She still is, I suppose.

"Love is for children," she says, lips twitching into a semblance of a smile like she does when she says something she knows the old me would have understood. She hands over a box, “but you’ll thank me later.”

The contents make me certain Natasha is terribly right and horribly wrong:

Garbage, detritus of a life I've already forgotten.

(Darcy's smile is blinding.)

* * *

I do what is expected: I fight these pathetic villains.

I write nonsense in the notebook the therapist I’m forced to sit with several times a week gave me. It’s mostly so he’ll leave me be, since he requires participation of some kind in his sessions, and scribbling the occasional word or two gives the appearance that I am actually cooperating.

I subsist. Days, occasionally weeks, will pass me by without my notice. I’d have an existential crisis, but it frankly seems like an awful lot of effort, so I remain as I am, carefully poised on the edge of sanity.

It’s been two years since Darcy Lewis left to start anew somewhere else. I’m not sure why she has become the thing I mark time against. There are so few truly exceptional things that happen after she leaves, though.

What else is there to do, but continue?

I'll find a purpose soon enough, and even if it takes me  _years_ , it will mean nothing to me in the long run. I'm older than I thought when I first woke up, much older, but there is still the possibility of literal  _eons_  ahead of me. 

Natasha calls me from one of the transports, one of the jets if my ears do not deceive me, and I demur when she requests my assistance. I have leave and I will not give it up at her say so.

Defiance is one of the few luxuries I am permitted, aside from the use of several enjoyably speedy vehicles. I've found that I am quite fond of exactly one thing on this wretched planet: the ways they go fast. Perhaps it's not as satisfying as riding Hel for leather on a fast mount, but fun nonetheless, something that my life is sorely lacking. 

"She's in danger. I don't know how, or who, but certain addresses were leaked. I can't reach her, Loki. Maybe it's nothing, but I have to be sure." Natasha Romanov is not one who feels something as petty as fear, yet I can hear the thread of it in her voice.

My heart starts to race, and I almost don't hear her next statement over the rushing in my ears. I don't need to know who  _she_  is. There is only one. 

"Rooftop, three minutes. Think you can make it, old man?"

"That joke never gets tiresome at all,  _milady_. I'll be there before you."

* * *

Darcy Lewis clutches a tan and brown feline with the most extraordinary turquoise eyes as she flees her domicile. 

I don't recall ever feeling such relief.

Until I see some bland, scrawny, child-sized man running along behind her. 

It's an emotion unlike any I've experience with. 

It would be so easy to put it down to misplaced jealousy. It's more like a sense of wrongness coupled with rage.

And then her house explodes. 

I have some misguided notion of expressing my empathy, despite the antipathy she'd shown me before she left, the resentment that I was no longer  _her_  me. 

The...  _person_  who'd darted out after her holds her hand. I do not give in to the urge to rip his head off of his shoulders.

( _Darcy_ ) Lewis is not at all what Mother imagined for me. She's so - so... human, sitting there, spectacles askew and hair wild in nothing but loose shorts and slip of fabric over the heavy breasts I do not fantasize about at all. 

Natasha examines at me as I take her in. 

"That was close," I make an idiotic statement for lack of anything better as I train my eyes on the bulkhead behind Natasha.

Darcy Lewis looks at me. I can feel it.

Her cat makes a sound that seems incongruous for a feline. 

"I'm sorry," I say, taking a chance and glancing at her again, those white lips and knuckles, tension writ clearly on every single part of her body.

It should be a platitude, but I am. She's done nothing to deserve any of this.

* * *

When Natasha has wrung the last traces of information from her, including the gratifying confirmation that the little man's performance was somewhat less than stellar, I meet Lewis at the door. 

I'd raided Natasha's locker for clothes, wrapping them around a bottle of white wine I'd found in the den along with a fistful of money I dug out from my stash. The bundle is shoved in a paper bag someone had left on the counter in Interrogation Observations Room 3.

She's still wearing that flimsy scrap of fabric on her top half, but at some point she'd slipped my tracksuit bottoms on, and it's a notion that distracts me more than her nipples, hard and tempting. When I realize where I am, I give her the bag I'd assembled so hastily, in order to have it done before we arrive at her temporary chambers. I want to be able to vacate the premises as quickly as possible. I deflect the thanks she gives me for doing something pitifully simple onto Natasha. Her gratitude makes me feel small.

I cannot seem to leave when I deposit her in the safety of her sparse accommodations.

Thankfully, she invites me in, rather than leaving me to linger uncomfortably in her doorway. 

Her cat hates me, a fact which is made fairly clear by the creature's hisses and bared claws. I find myself hoping that its owner feels differently. I stand awkwardly waiting for an invitation to sit (on her bed, as alternatives are nonexistent) while the cat is petted and made much of.

Lewis eventually gently sets the animal aside, right on top of her pillows, with many kisses and assurances of eternal devotion. 

I'm reminded of Mother, strangely.

She turns her back to me, fiddling with the bottle. There's something achingly familiar about the curve of her spine, the way her hair hangs over her face, but she shudders. 

The reaction is instinctive. 

I wrap my arms around her, tucking her close, letting my hand slide a path down her waist, hip, thigh, so I can grab her knees. She clings like limpet as I carry her to the bed. I don't have much of a choice when it comes to letting her go, even after laying her down. I settle down next to her, patting her shoulder ineffectually.

There might not have been much to be proud of in my other incarnation, but I will not make things worse for this person right now.

* * *

There are other agents of a lower 'pay grade' who are more than qualified to play bodyguard for a day. 

I am knocking on her door four minutes after she inquired about pet stores, with a packet of cat food in my back pocket.

"Ian has returned to England," I tell her, when I had meant to say at least a dozen other things. Either way, it's the best news I've gotten in ages, but perhaps I was a little overzealous in sharing it. 

Lewis does not look well as evidenced by the shadows and bags under her dull eyes. The glare she gives me is as much an indicator as the sharp edge in her voice that she would rather see me dead than be forced into my proximity at the moment.

She gathers herself visibly, makes a conscious effort to be civil, and explains patiently to me exactly what JARVIS the Second has already outlined in the mission parameters. 

I make a bit of a show checking my phone, even though I've already memorized several ways to get to our destination, before I ask her if she's ready.

I try not to notice how she pats herself down before she nods in the affirmative.

If she's surprised by my competence behind the wheel, she doesn't show it. I have it in good authority that I never seemed to enjoy driving before, but it gives me a sense of freedom I have difficulty finding elsewhere.

Driving out of the city, to New Jersey, the roads are clogged with commuters, but we arrive in good time. I hang back as she storms the shops, observing as she spends what seems to be entirely too much money on her cat and very little on herself. 

She's quiet and withdrawn the whole time, and I do not know how to break through the silent barrier between us, or even if I should. There's a fragility to her now, a sense that she's reached the end of her rope. 

It's undoubtedly better for all concerned that I leave her be as much as I can.

* * *

The truth of the matter is that it's not that difficult to avoid her. 

What I've learned of her since she's been gone, both through irritatingly vague and brief flashes of memories and through subtle questioning of my colleagues, indicates that she was quite outgoing, fond of socializing with her friends. Now she seems to spend all of the time she's not working, holed up in her apartment. 

Natasha visits when she's in town, which isn't very often now that she's trying to catch the scent of her quarry. It hadn't been just Lewis that had been targeted, Barton's family, and several other retired members had been, as well. She's taken it as a personal insult that _her people_ have been targeted, and tries to keep me out of it, in favor of raining her personal brand of justice down on the perpetrators. Her attempts to exclude me from the investigation fail. I have contacts of my own to probe for information, and just as much of a grievance as her. 

A particularly promising clue leads us to Paris, and it's nothing for me to change my appearance now that I have regained most of my magical proficiency. The necessity of altering my face rankles a bit, especially since it doesn't feel like it's my fault that I have to do so. It was the _other_ one who'd been banned.

Natasha gives me a satisfied nod at my new look, and we enter Paris easily. Her contact is not the sort to deal with strangers, but I have so much practice blending into shadows that it's not even a small challenge to follow her. 

When we're done in Paris, we have to leave quickly. This time, blowing up the Eiffel Tower is entirely Natasha's fault.

* * *

_(_ I've been explained the 'classic moves' by Steve Rogers. He is by no means my first choice for a confidant, but he happened to be there when she'd requested that I join her for something called Ghostbusters.

Darcy looks different than she normally does, and it's more than the fact that she's wearing a dress and tall, intricate shoes or that her hair is a riot of shiny curls. It's still her under it all, but the way she looks at me seems more intent, like she's looking for weak spots, like she's preparing for an assault.

As we wander through city streets I have yet to become familiar with, I find that she's lovely. I already knew that in an esoteric way - we'd managed to become friends of sorts after all, but there was something about her tonight. Darcy is always inquisitive, but her questions are especially incisive. I'm not sure why I don't mind.

As custom and tradition apparently dictate, I pretend to yawn and drape an arm across her shoulders about fifteen minutes into the movie. She looks at me oddly, pursing her lips as if she has to consider the situation before she settles back to refocus on the movie. I have no idea what we are supposed to be watching. None whatsoever, but it doesn't matter when I can sit here with her, closer than we've ever been.

I memorize the planes of her silhouette.

Her laugh is big and bold, unashamed and loud. She glances at me. She's exquisitely beautiful like this. So exactly herself that I lean over to whisper how glad I am we're here.

Darcy kisses me instead, and I have the feeling that several things fall into place. _)_

* * *

"You know she's leaving, right?"

"So you've informed me numerous times."

"Tonight, Loki. She's leaving tonight."

"Fuck's sake, Natasha. I know!"

"You're stupid. You're  _both_  incredibly stupid," the assassin says and throws a rolled up wad of the paper that passes for money at my face before she leaves.

* * *

My brother's mortal wife is not at all what I was expecting despite the stories. 

I'd thought her intelligence and stubbornness must've been exaggerated, but after speaking with her for a few short moments while her husband corners Darcy across the room, I know that it's basically true. 

Her arm is wrapped around mine and she pats my hand indulgently, "This has _got_ to be difficult for you."

I glance down at her and I see why Thor chose her in the solemn smile she gives me. I still choose to pretend I don't understand, "What?"

"Watching the woman you love walk away again."

What to say to that except, "It's not... that is... I'm fine."

"Oh, sure," she says and tugs on my arm, bringing my face down to a level where she can press a kiss to my cheek. "Whatever you're going to do, you'd probably better do it quickly. See? She's leaving," she points to Darcy lingering in the entryway.

I open my mouth to disagree, but Jane has already walked away me. She doesn't turn around as her friend disappears through doors without a second glance. 

 _Bugger_.

* * *

I am just in time to see Darcy practically fly out of the garage in one of Tony's favorite cars. 

There's an urgency building in my chest that I don't recognize, a pit forming in my stomach as my hands clench the stupid box Natasha had given me. 

I've snatched a set of keys from the locked box in the guard room, hopped into a convertible and am driving after her before I have a chance to second guess myself. 

She's fast and skilled as she cuts the large vehicle through traffic. I know she's going to the airport, and based on her trajectory I know which one she's headed to. I follow as closely as I can, but traffic makes it impossible to get too near.

I have to bribe a self-important guard to let me into the terminal, but by the time I make it through the checkpoint, I've lost her in the crowd. I tell myself I have plenty of time, but the truth is I have no idea when she's leaving. How are there so many people crammed inside this distinctly ugly building?

There's a second where I panic, but a break in the crowd appears, and I see her sitting not too far from where I am.

_(Darcy Lewis. Darcy Lewis. Darcy Lewis, Darcy. Just Darcy. No middle name._

_I love you, Darcy.)_

I've put all the hope I'll never allow myself in the box I give her. "I meant to give this to you before you left, but..." I take a deep breath, forcing my voice to remain calm. "Open it when you get where you're going."

She doesn't smile, but I keep mine in place, and maybe it will be enough, because she says  _See ya._

I don't reach for her, though I want to more than I can remember ever wanting anything, instead asking, "Promise?"

Her lips lift at the corners, faintly pitying.

Darcy Lewis shakes her head as she walks away.

* * *

There are absolutely things to do.

Plenty of things. 

So many things.

I do none of them. Natasha informs me that I'm sulking. I retort that I am doing no such thing, merely pondering the meaning of life.

"It's 42," she says. "Come on, we've got more bad guys to take care of."

42? Something of my confusion must be apparent on my face because Natasha sighs. "You used to read more," she says flatly. She grabs the tablet on the table and her fingers fly across the screen for a minute. 

Handing it to me, she heads for the door. "There, Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Come along. You can read in the jet."

* * *

It's standard procedure to visit what everyone calls the shrink, my old friend the therapist, after a mission. Stark is adamant about the necessity of keeping ones mental state healthy. The process is tedious, talkingtalkingtalking, made even more so by the fact that he insists that I had purposely left the notepad in the box I had given her when she left.

I'm not sure who exactly I'm lying to when I insist that it was an accident.

I've been thinking about her since she left a month ago. She's like an itch in my mind. 

(The concept is straight forward enough. A picnic. Eating outdoors, likely on a blanket and without proper utensils. Bugs. Dirt. Humans aren't really a particularly sanitary or civilized bunch, a fact which bothers me less and less as time wears on.

"A picnic?" Steve Rogers asks, eyebrows lifting in his comically expressive face.

He should be absolute rubbish at gambling, what with that complete inability to stop his emotions from becoming expressions, but the bastard is also preternaturally lucky. He rolls the dice and _yahtzee!_ five sixes.

Sighing as JARVIS the second tallies the score out loud, completing my humiliation, where I can't even cheat my way to winning.

"Well," he prompts.

I nod. I wouldn't have asked, but this whole thing is foreign and new to me, and I've no idea what to expect.

"And this is date number, what? Four?" I nod again, and he whistles. "A night picnic, away from the Tower?"

"Yes!" The man is insufferable most times, but especially now. "Are there any cultural norms or some sort of guidelines I should be made aware of before I go?"

The galling man laughs. Relationships are a bit different in Asgard, so I've made the obvious mistake of coming to this chattering monkey for guidance, as he was already aware of the situation. I glare at him.

"Ho, ha, hmmm. Yeah. So I know you guys," he waves a hand at me, looking away, "Do, uhm, sex. I mean Thor and Jane are..." his voice trails off again, as his hands twist into vaguely obscene gestures. He coughs and blushes. "Condoms, Loki. Bring some, you know. Just in case."

 _Oh_.

_Oh.)_

I do not sleep more than a few hours at a time, infrequently, maybe every few days, sometimes as long as a week. I don't have to very often, with the right combination of spells and stimulants. Still, even I succumb to exhaustion. I don't like it. Mostly because I dream.

I hate dreaming. It's as good as remembering.

(She's wearing a loose skirt and a tight shirt. Her shoes are flat, and Darcy seems short and ridiculously young standing there in my door, looking up at me. Excitement and nervousness seeps into her smile, "Ready?"

"Should I bring anything?" I ask, hearing Steve Rogers in my head saying  _condoms_  in that weird, strangled voice again. My ears burn.

"Nah, I've got everything all packed up in the car. Come on," she grabs my hand and starts dragging me down the hallway. She glances up at me when we're careening towards the ground in the elevator and smiles like she knows something I don't.

The meteor shower isn't anything exceptional, but Darcy seems quite taken. She eagerly points up at particularly bright spots streaking across the sky. Hours pass before she finally lets go of my hand and gets up to leave. There's a weight between us, a heaviness that presses against rational thoughts and subdues them.

The motions we go through - tidying up, folding the blanket, packing everything into her backpack, walking back to the car - are completely and utterly normal. My hands still clench behind my back as I walk next to her, casting about for something to say, anything that will ease the unbearable tension between us, but I come up empty.

"I had a really great time," she says, turning to me when we're in the car.

I don't look at her. I can't. If I look at her, the meager hold I have on my control might snap. I can hear her breathing. I can hear her heartbeat, the blood rushing in her veins. She'll start the car soon and everything will go back to normal.

"Are you alright? You're looking a little -," she puts her wrist to my forehead, "funny. You feel warm." Her fingers stroke my cheek briefly. "Loki?"

It happens so quickly, one minute I'm pressing my lips into her palm and the next she's scrambling over the armrests and straddling me. I've never felt a sense of urgency quite that strong before. Her hands are between us, fingers nimble and sure as she unbuttons and unzips my pants. I'll save being shocked by her audacity for some other time, because I'm fairly certain I couldn't have managed what she did myself.

She stills for a second, looking from it to my eyes. "Uhm, so this is OK, right? Like, you want to?"

There's no avoiding her face now, no regaining control of the situation. I probably should be worried about that, but I'm not. I trust her, I want her. The only way I'm going to be able to stop now is if she wants me to.

Words, smooth and polished, refined and seductive, I had so many of them, hundreds phrases I've used to great advantage. Those who named me Silver Tongue would be quite surprised by the development, since I can't think of a single thing to say. Kissing her turns out to be easier, in any case.

She makes me forget the nine realms with the way she responds.)

This one has left me shuddering and aching. I feel her absence like it's a completely tangible thing. My hand is nowhere near as satisfying as the way I imagine her feeling on top of me (under me, bent in front of me, legs hitched around my waist as I press her into the wall), but I'm too far gone for it to matter overmuch. 

The sheets needed to be changed anyway.

* * *

 

The meteor shower is barely visible from the sloping roof of the helipad observation room at the very top of the Tower. On one hand, it tears at me that humans have even managed to pollute the sky. On the other, I know better than most why they shine so much light it obscures all but the brightest stars. I've remembered something of what lives in the dark.

For the second year in a row, I sit and watch the Pleiades. There'll be another problem to solve, challenge to face, cliff to jump off of soon enough, since peace never lasts long, but for now, I can look up at a display I am fairly certain she wouldn't want to miss wherever she may be.

"She's not going to come back, you know," Natasha says with her typical bluntness. 

I hate it when she does that; just appears out of nowhere. That's supposed to be my trick.

Nevertheless, I accept the glass she hands me and knock it back in one go. It isn't often she offers me a drink, but it's usually when she's about to tell me something I don't want to hear or probably even think about. My lips turn down automatically, and I have to make a concerted effort to not cough. 

"Yeah," she says, grinning like the spawn of evil she is, "that's the good stuff."

"By what possible definition is  _this_  the good stuff?" I eventually manage. 

"By the definition that we're not blind or dead. Bruce wasn't entirely sure it'd be fit for human consumption. Another?" she asks and waggles the bottle at me. 

It seems prudent to accept, so I nod again and tilt my glass at her. "What is it this time?"

"You wound me, Loki," she clutches the bottle to her chest and flutters her eyelashes as she sags backwards. 

I look at her, and she drops the dramatic facade. "It makes me  _sad_ , alright, and you know how much I despise feeling things." Her eyes harden. "You loved her so much, Loki, and she loved you back. And both of you just pissed it away. Wasteful."

"She's  _human_ , Natasha." I can't hurt her again.

"So?"

"So she's not exactly going to be around for long." I feel something like shame at my words, even if they are nothing but the truth.

"Coward."

"I never said I was anything to the contrary."

Natasha Romanov is the acknowledged eye-roll master. The sheer amount of contempt she can convey in that one small gesture is astounding. Sighing heavily, she pours another measure of clear liquid fire into my glass and does the same to hers. "Aren't you tired of the lying?"

It's not what I expected from her and considering my specialty, I almost smile.

"Aren't you worried about regret? You said yourself, she won't be around for long. You might not either, the way you've been acting."

I sit quietly, absorbing the implications of what she's said. I hadn't realized that anyone had recognized how reckless my actions had become.

"I'm taking some time off. Things have been quiet for a while, and we both know that won't last forever. I mean to enjoy it while I can. You should join me. "

She's waiting for me to decline her offer and I can practically see her compiling a list of arguments in her head to use in an attempt to sway me. There have been times when she's been completely inscrutable to me. This is not one of those times. She's obviously going to see Darcy, wherever she might have ended up.

The thing is, I am miserable and, even if I only admit it to myself, scared to sleep. I've courted danger like it could save me from the depths in my mind that I have been too afraid to sound. My memories aren't always about Darcy. There's so much more buried inside me, horrors and moments where I make decisions that make my soul shrivel. She's the brightest of the memories that wash up on the shores of my conscious mind.

Sipping this stuff is so much worse than just drinking it down, like I'd learned to do with the foul tonics Mother's used to give me when I was sick. As soon as my face settles back into a semblance of normality, I surprise us both by saying, "Fine. When do we leave?"

She starts to say something, stops herself. Natasha looks at me, her lips flatten into a thin line, "I'm going to visit Darcy. Just so you know."

I'm nowhere near her level, but I roll my eyes at her anyway, "I'd already surmised that, but I appreciate the honesty."

"We leave tomorrow."

* * *

Of course Darcy has moved to a place she thinks I would hate.

The tropics, the Hawaiian Islands, specifically Kauai, near a beach. I suppose I gave her no reason to think I might actually have enjoyed myself there. Or a similar enough _there_. 

When I complained about our overly circuitous route there after Natasha showed me our itinerary, she'd pointed out archly, "It would rather defeat the purpose of setting her up with a new identity and home if we were just to lead anyone following us directly to her."

That was about 29 hours and 11 stops ago. It's apparently about 1 am local time, and it's still hot and humid like a sauna.

Darcy doesn't live anywhere near the private airstrip we have to land at. Natasha dismisses the pilot of the extraordinarily small helicopter with a cheery wave and grabs her bags, heading off down the packed red clay of the short runway towards a ramshackle building a short distance away.

It's barely more than an oversized three sided shed, a squat little structure that seems to be in the process of being subsumed by the dense growth that surrounds us. I grab my bags and follow her. Natasha is quick, despite her short, little legs. 

She's already speaking with a woman who has her exceptionally long legs propped up on a battered desk just inside. The woman has dark eyes and black hair slicked back into a tail. She gets up from behind the counter as I approach, and I see the black of her double shoulder holster under the loose shirt she'd left unbuttoned. Standing, her size is even more apparent. She dwarfs me, very nearly Jotun in her proportions.

Natasha has to crane her neck to look up at the other woman and the absurdity of their size difference makes my lips twitch with the urge to smirk. She points vaguely at me, "Don't mind this one, he's with me. I can't stay and chat, but we'll get together later on this week. You can give me a progress report and buy me dinner. Who's on watch now?"

The mountain-sized woman looks suddenly delighted, and the smile transforms her face into something much less menacing. She responds in a startlingly honeyed alto, "Lin right now, and Fred is going to take over about an hour before you arrive. As far as dinner, you like fish, if I remember correctly? I'll catch some for us."

Natasha laughs, "I'll look forward to it. Is my board in the jeep? You're a treasure, Loa, thank you. Come along, Loki. I have promises to keep, and we still have miles to go before we sleep."

She yanks a tarp off a sturdy, open vehicle and tosses her bag in the back. A long white curved board about as thick as my wrist and as wide as her shoulders is tied to the side. She gives it a longing look before hopping in the driver's seat and launching us at great speeds towards the outside. It's dark out here with only the two headlights slicing illumination into the jungle.

We practically fly away from the decrepit building, down a narrow, twisting path. The deep ruts keep us from tumbling off the primitive road, but it's hardly the most comfortable experience. I scowl at the thick humidity. I know my hair is probably a wreck, what with the wind added in. 

We hit an actual paved road after about a half hour of Natasha's sliding around corners a bit too fast and aiming for every pothole she spots. Eventually, she takes pity in me and we stop for a pee break and snacks.

Before we resume our course along the magnificent coastline, I prod at the rugged tires like I could possibly diagnose any issue but the obvious. I've come to the conclusion that whoever designed these roads was a complete madman, but the views are incredible.

Apparently sick of the silence, Natasha fiddles with the buttons on her steering wheel. She flips through what seems like all of the stations until she finally settles on something mellow with lots of strings and piano.

When we stop, I'm wrung out from the entire experience. It was distastefully inefficient and took far too long. 

"Don't pout," Natasha says as she tosses my bag into my chest with enough force to make me step back. "The road trip is an American institution. Besides, we're here. I've heard she's done some pretty nifty things with the place."

"How would you know?" I ask petulance lacing every word.

"You think I would leave her without someone keeping watch on her?" she gives me an unimpressed look and her eyebrow shoots up. "No, dumbass. Of course not." Eye roll. "Loa and her crew keep an eye out for me, keep me up-to-date. They're fully prepared for a serious or minor security incursion, but it's been unnecessary. Things around here are quiet and peaceful. Why did you think I wanted to come?"

"I wouldn't dream of making any assumptions as to your motives."

"Whatever. You're in room five," she looks at me as she hands over a key. "I feel like I probably should have considered this a little better. Damn," she says as she unlocks the door with a an oxidized copper 4 on the door. "Look, she does a breakfast for the guests, so she'll probably be up early. Just let me warn her before you go charging in there, alright? Promise, or I'll make you regret it."

Unlocking my own door, I elect to ignore her. She sputters behind me as I close the door in her face. 

It's blessedly cool inside, and dimly lit. There's just enough illumination to avoid the bed and chairs and to locate the bathroom. I flick on the lights. 

The room is not exactly big, but the layout isn't cluttered. It's actually quite lovely. I'd somehow never realized after years of dreams and accumulating memories that she had taste. The blues and greens are soft and soothing. The glass enclosure for the shower is clean and sparkling.

I strip quickly and shower. The soaps provided smell heavenly. 

When I am finally clean and fresh, I pad back into the bedroom and flop face first into the mattress. I lay there, just breathing, trying to force the tension in my muscles to release. I'm not entirely successful. Despite my perfectly adequate surroundings, I feel claustrophobic. The sounds of distant waves should be soothing. It should be, because it always was, from what I remember. 

We'd spent too many hours sitting, and while I thoroughly enjoy many of the methods of transport available on Midgard, I have apparently been treated to the absolute worst for the last 29 hours. It's probably normal to feel like I could crawl right out of my own skin.

I put on shorts and shoes, grab a towel and a shirt, and start jogging towards the sound of the water. It isn't far. The jagged rocks don't deter me, but they probably should. I toe off my shoes, putting them and everything else well above the highest waterline. I have to carefully pick my way to the water splashing below. 

The temperature is cool, but lacks the bite of incumbent ice I remember of the oceans of Asgard. I brace myself, nonetheless, and jump as far as I can, cutting quickly through the waves. I swim, farther and faster, breathing swiftly to side every dozen or so strokes. More stars than I am now used to are above me and the sea is dark below. So far out from shore, I can almost lose myself in the rhythm of propulsion. Eventually I exhaust myself, and flip over to my back.

I float, bobbing gently on the endless waves, somewhere between dream and reality, until the sun comes up. The sense of being completely and truly alone for the first time in years, rises up from below. I can let myself sink into the whispers with the newest light clean on my skin. 

When I come to, I've already started to turn slightly pink and I've drifted a fair distance. The swim back is much longer, but it's invigorating and exhausting all at the same time. Getting out of the water turns out to be a bit like that, much harder on the way in compared to the way out. The rocks are brutally sharp and shred my skin easily. My feet are not in good shape after, so I sit and wait until they are healed again before I put them back in my shoes and head up the narrow path to Darcy's. 

I can almost manage to convince myself that the trembling in my muscles and the dryness in my mouth is a simple case of over-exertion. I'm not immune to my own lies - I had perfected my art on myself first after all.

I see Natasha and Darcy standing in a large outdoor kitchen. I look down at myself, sandy and salty, the shirt the only thing sort of clean and presentable. 

I hear Natasha tell Darcy, "Don't freak."

I can't help but smile at Darcy's shocked face, because even if this is definitely not going to end well... Natasha was right. I have been pining for her, missing her.

She's so close. I drink her in, noting the changes in her appearance from the pictures in my head. She's older, but it suits her. Makes her look like she knows herself.

Her cheeks go bright red as she looks between us. I recognize that flabbergasted look. I do, and it makes me want to pick her up and take her to bed, but I don't. Not yet.

Darcy turns to busy herself with coffee and I make tea and leave her be for now. I don't need to make her uncomfortable by forcing her into my company. I elect to give her some space and get acclimated to my presence so I wander back to my room. 

When I come back out, I've showered again and both of them are gone. 

I had looked into my black fear out there on the water. I was not the same, but I was more me for it.

There wasn't any reason to hurry at the moment.

Patience wasn't something I naturally had in spades, but I could wait until she found me again. Something tells me that Darcy Lewis won't be driven from her home again. Certainly not by the likes of me. As I sit, the cat with the pretty eyes steals around a corner and regards me with the same look all creatures have when they're secure in their superior place in the universe. 

Eventually, the cat's curiosity gets the better of her and she hops on the table next to me. 

She refuses to allow me to touch her for a long time. 

Directly after my first successful attempt I see Darcy emerge from behind the lush vegetation that borders her shaded outdoor area. She's flushed and irritated. I can imagine a thousand things to try to coax that expression from her face, and only a small portion of them are inspired by memories.

I smile at her. People like my smile - it's almost a weapon of its own. 

"Why are you here?" She's remarkably impervious to my charms, on top of sounding a bit like she wants to rip my arms off so she can beat me with them.

"I thought," stalling a bit while I try to think of something relatively truthful to say. "I thought you'd come back."

She's affronted by my words, I can tell that easily. It takes a minute, but Darcy draws in her anger and finally smiles at me. It's beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night. Her laugh is dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning. Her voice is strong like the foundations of the Realms. "Why on earth would I?"

It's like a great light illuminates her alone and leaves everything else dark. She stands before me now, seeming tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful. Then her composure slips, and the light fades, and suddenly she is shrunken: a slender earth-woman, clad in simple clothes, whose face is soft and sad.

I can only think of one thing to ask; "Did you ever open the box?"

It seems like a pitiful offering in retrospect, but I can't believe that she would have looked through all of that and not have contacted me. 

She shakes her head, seems dazed and out of it. I stay in my chair as she touches her cat on its head.

I look at her and she's just Darcy and not what my mind had built her into before, but there's still strength there through her sadness.

"Maybe you could?" I whisper. 

She walks away and through a set of doors and doesn't look back.

Natasha left with the car sometime in the morning and hasn't returned. I'm not worried about her, I know she is more than capable of taking care of herself. It just would have been nice to have a buffer. 

I decide to swim some more. I don't have any epiphanies this time, I just exhaust myself. Again. Sometimes, on very rare occasions, I can push myself so hard that sleep is peaceful. I was trying not to wish for it, but maybe I'd be lucky.

After getting cleaned up again, I met Natasha outside our room. Apparently, Darcy had decided to cook for us, and I find that I am famished. It is a fine meal, but I feel awkward around these two women, and leave shortly after eating. They've been friends, too, and deserve to have time to themselves without my presence.

I'd started to read more after Darcy had left, and can certainly entertain myself that way while she and Natasha catch up.

The music pounds until well after midnight, laughter and voices an equally loud and happy counterpoint. I try not to envy their camaraderie too much.

* * *

I'm surprised when I hear the Jeep start up and drive away early the morning, but I don't worry about it overmuch. It's the smell of coffee that stirs me from my book. I wonder whether I should venture out, but if Darcy wanted me gone, likely she would already have made that plain.

Deciding that discretion is the better part of valor, I swim and drift, swim and drift, cutting my feet on the rocks again when I leave the water. The sting of the saltwater is intense, but it clears my head and gives me something temporary to focus on. Or that's the theory, the one that doesn't really pan out. I heal quickly, painlessly and think of her.

It's easy to, here. I can tell by the lack of garbage and debris she comes down here to tidy it up and leave the beach better than she found it. The concept feels familiar in conjunction with her. I trudge up the path, uncertain of what I'm hoping to accomplish with this trip.

After, I wander back to the outdoor kitchen area. There's fruit under a glass cloche, and coffee, both of which I help myself to. I take a few sips while I try to figure out what the different pieces of fruit are. 

I hear a sort of snuffling, gasping sound. Turning, I see Darcy's hunched in a chair, almost hidden, sleeping, but it's not the restful kind. She crying, and it breaks something inside every time she hiccups a sob. I'm shaking her shoulder firmly before I have a chance to think about the consequences of my actions.

She blinks up at me, eyes wet and full of loss. It's the way she looks so lost that hurts. 

"Sorry," I tell her, and it's so inadequate as to be laughable. I step back, putting space between us, hoping that... I'm actually not sure what I'm hoping for, but-

"It's fine, I'm fine," she looks up at me and says. She lies like I taught her personally. It's overwhelming, in a way. Better evidence than all the pictures and trinkets shoved at me, more convincing than all my dreams, that I loved her.

And I did ( _do_ ). And she loved me back. "No, I am." I regret up to the brim of me. I should probably go do something else. I should definitely go somewhere else.

I can't seem to get my feet to lift or my legs to move. She opens her palm and sweeps her arm out, indicating the empty chair opposite, "Sit. If you want."

There's a determination on her face, and I can't help but stare. Some part of me has always missed this person. I can see why, more now than before. That seemed like more of a reflex than an emotion, and this is something infinitely more specific. 

I sit. She looks at me. I have to press myself back into my seat so I don't do something stupid like launch myself at her to prostrate myself at her feet. I can't let her know how much this is affecting me, so I make my face a mask I can try to hide behind.

Darcy touches me, putting her hand on top of mine, like I never wanted her to when I first woke up without my memories. She sounds so sincere, so forgiving when she tells me that I've apologized enough, "We're cool, you and me."

Her hand slips away as she sits back, still regarding me intently. I can't quite make eye contact in return. 

"How much do you remember?"

She makes seem like the easiest question in the world, but I squirm under it. I'm not able to decide what would be right, what would be the best answer, if I should lie. In the end, I give her a version of the truth, "I don't know everything, but I know you loved me, before."

I can tell it hurts her, but her voice is still calm when she asks, "How long?"

It's impossible to explain how much my memories of her have tormented me or for how long. 

She repeats her question, daring me to tell her, to break her heart again. 

"Always. I always knew to a certain extent. You made it unavoidable. And more as you were around. I  _am_  sorry I didn't understand that." What I say makes her look haunted, but I can't stop now that I've started. "I used to look at the stuff in that box," my mouth trips over her name, "Lewis. I used to wonder why you left when you loved me. And then I remembered I always called you Darcy, and that you could light up a room with your smile."

It's nearly impossible to stop now that the words have started. I give her a helpless grin, "I used to wake up, for no reason, in the middle of the night. And I'd pat the spot next to me, the emptiness, looking for something. I finally realized it was you and the pieces of us I lost."

She has every right to be angry. I don't blame her for it. The least I can do is let her barbed recriminations catch me where I'm vulnerable. "What was the point of sticking around, when you didn't seem to care?" she asks, more angry than anguished. 

"I didn't want to hurt you worse. I wasn't prepared to be a consolation prize, to make us both miserable. I hoped you were happy, and if you weren't, I was worried hearing from me would make it worse for you."

Her eyes go wide and she looks shocked. She staggers up, ready to run, but I feel more myself than I have in ages. I reach out without really meaning to, fingers circling her wrist before I can make sense of the urge. "Don't."

"I don't know if I have it in me to do this again," she tells me quietly.

It's a selfish thing, a need I have to touch her, to smell her, to taste her, to see if she's even close to the heights I've built her to in my mind. "One day, Darcy. Just one day." 

( _Just one time won't be enough, you know it won't. That's it. Tell me, tell me, tell me._..)

She's the only one I've ever felt anything approaching this for. I exhale as she settles on my lap. "Darcy," I speak her name and she shudders in my arms. Our kiss is uncoordinated and graceless, all force and no subtlety. She pushes me back, touching her lips, pulling the digits back to examine them. 

Her smile is bright as she dips back down to kiss me again, and we find a rhythm this time. It's like fighting or swimming or doing magic for the first time and figuring out the mechanics. It's like nothing else. I could literally just sit here, pressing her closer and closer, sipping life from her lips. Too much is building and I fear for her, for me, for us.

I have to lean back for a moment, catch my breath. My heart is racing and my thoughts are tumbling end over end. "What is this?" It's a question that rings a feedback loop in my mind, something so familiar...

"Us," Darcy tells me, eyes hooded and heavy. There's a certainty in her voice that attracts me. 

I believe her, not just because of the echoes she's setting off, but because no one else has ever touched me like she does. Like she knows all my secrets and doesn't care.

My hands hesitate at her shoulders, a heartbeat from brushing the straps of her shirt off her shoulders. I look back at her face, her eyes, almost closed, and she nods, "Go ahead. Do it."

I kiss her before I look down again, watching as she's revealed to me. Her skin is bright white across her breasts, a sharp contrast between what is generally not covered and what is always hidden.

The sound of nails on fabric is the only clue that she's apprehensive about this, her hands clenching in the cushions on the armrests. She doesn't need to be self conscious about anything. She is still lovely, and I mean to show her how much, bending to worship the creamy skin and pink nipples.

Darcy responds with whimpers and undulations. I want to take my time, but as in the dream, I can't control the urgency building and clawing. Her fingers pull at my shorts, panting moans and pleas in my ear, and without warning, she's pressing down on my cock. I can't quite find the leverage to properly thrust, and neither is she sitting at the best angle. It's uncoordinated and it's clumsy. It's everything.

I don't have time to think about anything but trying to keep my mouth on her, nibbling and teasing as she arches. She's quieter than I imagined, when she comes. But then, I'd always woken up before we reached the point of no return. Her hands are in my hair, her lips are pressing on my neck when I come down from my own high. "Next time we're doing that in a bed," I finally manage.

She giggles lazily, "You always say that."

Strange as it seems, I think she's right. 

* * *

It's hours later and dark when I wake up. I haven't slept like that in... ever, or at least not since I've woken up in this place I wasn't supposed to belong.

Darcy is curled into my side, leg and arm slung across my body, like she wants to make sure I'm not going anywhere. I'm fine with that. Her hair is shorter, curlier than in the pictures of us, but they're soft and springy when I touch them. 

She shifts on top of me, the pattern of her breathing changing from one second to the next. "You're awake," I say inanely. 

"Yeah," she agrees, and I can feel how her heart races, can hear the blood rushing in her veins clearly.

I don't want to be without her again. For as long as she'll permit me to, I want to be near Darcy. The depths of my mind are nothing compared to the depth of my longing for her. If I had just let go earlier I'd have had more time with her. So many mistakes piled up in such a short time, such a long time, and, "I want to stay."

Darcy goes completely rigid in my arms.

"Can I?" I ask, trying to sound casual, and failing utterly, I'm sure.

I feel her rub her face into my chest - I swear I feel her smile like a tangible thing - and she squeezes me tightly. 

A knot loosens somewhere in the vicinity of my stomach, a veritable boulder of tension and fear I hadn't even known was there. "Good," I say more to myself than to her, and repeat it again for her benefit, " _good_."

My hands roam her body, my palms and fingers finding paths that are intimately familiar. It's not for anything but the pleasure of reacquaintance and when my thought drift, I don't fear their destination like I once did. 

"Darcy Lewis?" I say her full name, relishing the shape of the syllables, like candy or sweets, wallowing in the way she stretches against me. 

She props her head on one of her hands, placed on my chest, directly over my heart. The smile she gives me is bright as a lighthouse, "Yes, Loki Friggason?"

Whatever it was that was swelling and stretching inside, breaks apart. For a second, I am my mother's son again. It's the best thing anyone has ever said to me.

"I finally feel like I'm home."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I jacked so much stuff for this chapter:  
> \- 1 totally obvious Star Trek quote,  
> \- a couple of quotes from the Avengers,  
> \- a few lines from Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,  
> \- 2 whole paragraphs I shamelessly ripped off and barely changed: Galadriels reaction to Frodo offering the One Ring (oof, I feel bad about that one). Sorry JRR!
> 
> Huge thanks for the support, kudos and comments, and a thousand apologies for not responding to them sooner.

**Author's Note:**

> Why, yes I did in fact steal some of the lyrics from Silversun Pickups' Lazy Eye to use as titles. The story is mine, yes. Titles, not so much.


End file.
